Everything outside was beautifully befrosted this Christmas morning. Inside, however, Santa clearly wasn’t sure whether I had been good or not this year.

Having just about regained my appetite in time for the biggest meal of the year, a power cut early on Christmas day looked like it might put the kibosh on all attempts to cook it. Thankfully, the electricity repair man angel stepped in and saw to it that everyone in the locality had the power to fuel their feasting (not to mention their colouredy Christmas lights).

Y’know, a Paddy such as I could probably make themselves quite at home in the corner of Spain that is Galicia. The landscape is really quite green, the region does a good line in celtic diddly-eye music and the local cuisine features plenty of spuds. Walking through the countryside here, you might well feel like you have been transported to somewhere that has all of the appearances of the slow-paced, rural Ireland of times past, but with warmer weather and, it has to be said, better seafood.